anyone have a Starter Store?

[keziak]

I've gone from Premium down to Basic and am flirting with dropping to Starter. Tired of having hundreds of Fixed Price listings with low sell-through (books). I'm asking myself if in 2023 I should carry  many fewer FP listings. 

I currently pay $24.95 a month for the Basic plus around $62 to run around 50 auctions a week. I never reach my limit of 1000 free FP. So that is $86.95. 

With the Starter store I would get up to 250 free auction and Fixed Price or 200 auctions and 50 FP for $4.95.  Even if I went over my allotment by 50 additional FP or auctions that is only an extra $15 for a total of $19.95. I would lose the $25 credit for shipping supplies.

Could someone check my math and see if I am calculating this wrong? I  have until Feb 1st to change my subscription. 

thanks

[nobody*s_perfect]

With either a Starter store or no store at all, you'd get 250 free insertions per month to allocate to either auctions or fixed price listings however you choose.  

With no store, an overrun of 50 insertions would cost (50 x $0.35=) $17.50; with a Starter store, it would be (50 x $0.30=) $15.00. 

If you are paying $24.95 per month for your Basic store, that means you have signed up for a full year subscription and you will be charged an "early termination fee" if you cancel or downgrade your subscription before the final month of your commitment.

[keziak]

yes, as I mention I have  until Feb 1st when my current annual subscription is due.

[chapeau-noir]

@keziak  I have a starter store - the advantages I see for me are that I have a small footprint and everything basically in one place, organised in coherent categories.  Because I have a fair amount of followers and repeat customers who actually shop my store, I decided to retain the little footprint to keep things familiar for them - I was premium, then with GTC went down to Basic (GTC was a great game changer for me), then with going to part-time here I'm now at starter.

I don't miss the supplies discount - it has shrunk so much that it's negligible, really.  On the other hand, I'm a really small seller here so don't use the big amount of supplies I used to.

If you don't have lots of repeat business or feel the necessity to have your own categories, then the savings with relists over the allotment to me is the biggest reason to pay the $4.95/month for that. 

[threelittlelambs]

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@nobody*s_perfect wrote:

With either a Starter store or no store at all, you'd get 250 free insertions per month to allocate to either auctions or fixed price listings however you choose.  

With no store, an overrun of 50 insertions would cost (50 x $0.35=) $17.50; with a Starter store, it would be (50 x $0.30=) $15.00. 

If you are paying $24.95 per month for your Basic store, that means you have signed up for a full year subscription and you will be charged an "early termination fee" if you cancel or downgrade your subscription before the final month of your commitment.

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With these calculations it would seem no store would be better for OP. I think he is mistaken though about the store price. I have a Basic Store also and it's $21.95 per month for yearly ( which is what I pay) and $27.95 for month to month.

[keziak]

I have a couple of repeat customers that I notice, they follow my auctions. I get combined orders but broadly speaking the hundreds of FP listings just sit there unsold. 

[keziak]

You are right, thanks for the correction. 

[chapeau-noir]

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@keziak wrote:

I have a couple of repeat customers that I notice, they follow my auctions. I get combined orders but broadly speaking the hundreds of FP listings just sit there unsold. 

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Well, I find books a really hard, slow sale and rarely list them anymore.  I definitely don't auction them off unless they're rare (i.e., I think they'll fetch well over $50-100).  If it's your auction customers who repeat and not your fixed price customers, and auctions are really your money-maker, then the biggest consideration IMHO is if you want to pay $4.95 so you get cheaper listings over the allotment for the FP stuff.  If your FP stuff just doesn't sell, I think I'd rather just go without a store and just get rid of the excess stock, rather than to keep paying to list it, and use your listings for items that will sell, auctions and the like.  You can always sign up again for a store.  ETA:  If you go heavy on auctions you'll have plenty of just the free allotment of listings to cover, and seems like that's the better path to success here.

[dhbookds]

In the last 90 days you've sold 147 f/p items........196 auctions.........  to me saving $15 a month on a store wouldn't be worth giving up possible f/p sales.

Having said that.........what I would do going forward is not list anything under $15-20 in the store and see if that doesn't ease whatever the pain is.......  If you cut back the f/p, going to a smaller store........you will have to give up over 400 present f/p.........so you will have to set a price level anyway....... just start doing it now......as you list...... 

[keziak]

It's not an issue so much of pain but return on investment (time, actually, more than money). I get FP sales out of my store, sure.  But sell-through is lame. Every book I list in the store is one or maybe two books I could be listing in the same time on Amazon.  My business model is more than ebay (as is true for most of us).

One use I have for the store is cycling book lots in and out of auctions which generates sales. But really not many of those at all. 

The wild card in my situation is all the boxes of inventory I have yet to list, and how much of that can't be listed on Amazon. For example I am blocked from listing Marvel graphic novels there. I also have a whole lot of martial arts DVDs, not sure how much of that I can list on Amazon. 

I guess I could downgrade at the end of the month and see how things work out for the next few months. I can always upgrade again if need be. But going forward I want to just be a lot more picky about what I spend time listing here, not just any old thing in an attempt to get closer to 1000 listings.

I appreciate the input from you guys.